His father was the proprietor of a tobacco shop. His mother, Elizabeth grew up in Wetzlar, Germany near Giessen. He enrolled at the school of mines at Saint-Etienne in 1818, obtaining his diploma in July 1820.
In 1820, Boussingault took position at a lignite mine in Alsace and then 1822, received an appointment to the National School of Mines in Bogota, Colombia.
In 1831, he noticed that the brine from various salinas (salt mines), which had a high iodine content, was used by the local inhabitant, particularly in the province of Antionquia, to prevent goiter.
After travelled to South America, in 1832 he returned to France, where he became professor of chemistry. In 1839 he was appointed to the chair of agricultural analytical chemistry at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers de Paris.
Boussingault was appointed to the faculty at the Sorbonne in 1837. Two years later, he was elected to the French Academie des sciences at the young age of 37 years and was regarded well enough in the twentieth century to be included in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. He died in Paris on 11 May, 1887.
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Dieudonné Boussingault
